DELL Equallogic PS5500E Auto Snapshot Manager
Posted by craig 
- on November 13th, 2008 in Hardware, Industry News, Virtualization | 2 Comments »
The latest version of ISCSI SAN Equallogic PS 5500E which launched recently had provide better capacity, performance, extra functionalities and more spindles in arrays. It could be support both 500GB and 1TB SATA II spindles up to 48 drives in a single array of 4U. A very impress usable storage space in single array which up to 48TB in raw. If we compare to the capacity, it is hardly found that a single array would provide a huge capacity at 48TB in Raw today. In additional to that, DELL had provide all the necessary features as for storage management as free which integrated as part of the storage purchase for Dell Equallogic ISCSI SAN. The latest features is regarding the Snapshot Manager for VMware. Previous version is only supported on Microsoft environment, but now, it had also supported on VMWare environment.
This features provide more option which will allow the users to snapshot, backup, and restore the files, volume, VM or even a single file that you need. Many of us may think about using the VCB for our VM backup today, the Dell Equallogic had provide some interesting package which allow us to avoid of VCB in our environment, and provide better backup and restoration process.
If we talk about disk base backup, which is VTL, it always cost involve in term of disk space and software licenses. With the latest features from Equallogic, we will able to avoid the extra investment require on VTL, but provide the similar functionalities on disk base backup, and from disk to tape backup. If I bought the equallogic previously and sign up with the maintenance, I entitle the upgrade of the new features today. It will be a excellent surprise for my investment. As economy crisis, IT budget is been tight and require to work smarter, this should be a great news for the consumers. Personally, I will still say that the 10Gbe will be my option as to get rid of the fiber channel storage that we current use for VMware. As 48 spindles in a single array, we may need the bigger through put from the array to reach the client always.
According to DELL, we should able to see the official launch on 10Gbe on 1st quater of 2009.
2 Responses
I went to Dell Discussion last month regarding Dell Equal-Logic iscsi Storage. While the so call “snapshot” thing offered by Dell Equal-Logic impress me a lot on how it works but to be honest, it’s require an extra local storage just for the snapshot and that’s mean it will reduce the usable storage. Plus, I would still preferred and recommend to my customer to have an off-line backup rather than keep all the backup inside Equal-Logic. Yes, Equal-Logic doesn’t only offering with their snapshot capability but also with storage replication which works similar to VMware VMotion, IO & LUN virtualization & etc. But all this need an extra Equal-Logic with the same capacity and to be honest, with the current economy situation, this is not a good choice for the customer indeed.
Hi, if I not mistaken, there is an integration allow you to direct backup the snap volume to tape, which will not interrupt your normal activity. Is little bit different than the normal backup method we use now. You can find out more from dell technical representative if you are interested